TAG | Point of S
Will Credit Cards Go Obsolete Using This New Payment Method?
Inside Contactless, a leading provider of advanced, open-standard contactless chip technologies, and First Data, a global leader in electronic commerce and payment processing services, today announced they have signed a three-year agreement to develop contactless payment stickers, which First Data will market as GO-Tag products. With this agreement, INSIDE will supply MicroPass payment sticker prelams exclusively to First Data-qualified card manufacturers for production.
The agreement helps leverage the core technology from INSIDE Contactless and First Data’s issuing and transaction processing power. First Data will be marketing and distributing GO-Tag products to financial institutions, major U.S. merchants, and other distribution channels in a variety of form factors.
“First Data’s GO-Tag Solution represents an important step in the evolution from today’s plastic cards and fobs, offering a bridge to the future of mobile payments,” says Barry McCarthy, general manager, Mobile Commerce and Point of Sale Solutions for First Data. And that the partnership with INSIDE Contactless gives them the ability to offer consumers an opportunity to turn just about any personal item, from a mobile phone to an employee ID badge, into a useful payment device.
“This agreement highlights the versatility of our MicroPass platform to support a variety of contactless payment applications and form factors, including stickers,” says Charles Walton, executive vice president of payments for INSIDE Contactless.
Since Contactless credit card technology becomes more common in the marketplace, it can be a good idea to update your restaurant POS system with them in the near future. And we all know that customer service is all about the speed and fast transaction to a restaurant point of sale terminal, the better the service is the better your customer experience will reflect on the value of your services.
The author of this article writes for POS-For-Restaurants.com, a VP of Customer Relations with over 20 years experience in restaurant point of sale system, helping restaurant owners nationwide increase their efficiency and bottom-line profits.
To learn on how our national POS network of restaurant point of sale professionals can help your business achieve greater success in these difficult economic times, visit POS-For-Restaurants.com.
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Boost your bottom line and make your restaurant grow bigger!
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Growing Your Profits
In today’s economy, every cent counts and adding them to your bottom line is possible despite the economic doom and gloom reports. These steps will make you increase your profit and decrease expenses, as well as blocking theft so your business can grow much bigger.
In the food service industry, if you’re running a restaurant point of sale system then this tips can greatly help you grow your business!
Checks
They are still widely used, especially among older customers. If you haven’t been accepting checks, start soon. There are many good POS equipments that can scan checks as fast as debit cards, check out and measure them against a nationwide database of bad check writers, electronically deposit the money, and can guarantee that you’ll receive the funds within a few days. In addition, it costs less than for credit cards and can add 10% to 15% of your sales—and possibly more if you have many senior customers.
Accepting All Cards
Of course, you’re already accepting cards like Visa and MasterCard. What about Discover and American Express? Particularly, the latter accompanies larger transactions in general. You might have hesitated because of the high fees, but do reconsider—a 1% difference may not look worthy of consideration for you, and because American Express transactions are often larger than those of other cards, you’ll make it up in gross profit. Furthermore, customers may keep coming back because they’ll know that your business accepts all forms of credit cards.
Do Your Research
Most merchants think their fees are 1.69 percent plus $.19 because that’s their qualified rate on a pricing program tier. Though fewer than 20 out of 100 transactions receive the low qualified rate and all the rest downgrade and cost one, two, or even three percent. Researching alternate programs that offer different interchange rates could end up saving more than you think.
Insist on Understanding
Neither you nor your bookkeeper would have to scratch the back of your heads over complex credit card statements that just doesn’t add up. A few companies have made extraordinary efforts to simplify these reports. You should be able to reconcile your statement and rates without exceeding 15 minutes.
Get Reports Over The Internet
You’ll never have to wait for the post office to deliver a letter disputing a charge. With Internet reporting, you’ll exactly know what’s up within 24 hours, allowing you to aggressively defend against chargebacks. This type of quick action will increase your success rates and reduce your losses.
So you won’t have to scratch a head over a complex credit card statement, as well as your bookkeeper.
Use the Card Validation Value and Address Verification System. These highly effective fraud screens are proven to reduce losses, and by using them the right way, you can achieve the lowest possible discount rate.
Also, you need to avoid computer hackers by being PCI compliant. Hackers can cause merchants mammoth of fines, and they can drive you out of business. Find time to read Visa’s report on noncompliant systems, you need to be alert in order to protect your business.
How To Lessen Chargebacks
If you run an online or phone ordering business, it’s always a great idea to implement the “Verified by Visa” or “MasterCard Secure Code” plug-in on your web site. This will eliminate cardholder nonauthorization chargebacks. The state of being legally obliged and responsible for these chargebacks is shifted away from you to the issuing card bank, and you qualify for the lowest discount rate available. This simple step could eliminate up to 80 percent of all chargebacks and increase your profits.
With over 20 years of restaurant point of sale experience and helping businesses in the food-service industry nationwide increase their efficiency and bottom-line profits, the author of this article is the VP of Customer Relations at POS-For-Restaurants.com.
You may visit POS-For-Restaurants.com for further understanding of how our national network of restaurant point of sale professionals can help your business achieve greater success in these difficult economic times.
Focusing on restaurant credit card security measures
The credit card industry has been coming down hard on many restaurants that have not fully protected their customers’ credit card information from potential theft, with Visa, MasterCard and financial institutions that process electronic payment over recent months sending warnings letters and holding seminars. With these moves, it forces restaurants to take in consideration additional steps on how to safeguard their customers’ credit card information.
On the side of companies that process card transactions, tens of thousands of eateries are not complying with credit card industry security rules. Any company that takes plastic is required to follow a set of security regulations instituted by Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Discover.
With the data recorded by Visa indicates that since January of 2005, around 40% of the incident wherein criminals gain unauthorized access to credit card info is made up of restaurants — provides the largest percentage of incidents for a merchant category.
Separately, there are reports from a Chicago-based data security auditor, AmbironTrustWave, for merchants that 62% of the security violations it witnessed during the prior 18 months occurred in the restaurant industry.
These violations includes various security lapses such as the poor guarding of wireless networks — which easily enable thieves to access sensitive information just outside of the parking lot using a laptop — and lax systems that makes it a lot easier for a staff with criminal intention to gain access to credit card information.
Mostly, consumers are not aware when their credit card information is in danger. Not all security breaches produced successful fraud, and most merchants do not recognize these incidents unless there is a significant likelihood that a major fraud will take place or has already been identified. Furthermore, credit card issuers don’t usually close a customer’s account unless fraud has taken place.
Restaurateurs may have a rough time with credit card security rules, since its regulations can be very difficult for small merchants. Hearing from the restaurant owners who thought they complied with rules, the National Restaurant Association trade group found out their systems were not functioning properly and were penalized.
An amount of 0,000 or more in some cases have been fined to restaurants that violated the credit card industry rules by storing credit card information. Visa fined merchants across all categories .6 million for security violations in 2006, an increase from the .4 million in fines the previous year.
After recently conducting special security briefings with several hundred restaurants, although they declined to provide a breakdown of merchant types, Visa believes a merchant group needs additional attention.
At the same time, companies that process credit card transactions are also turning up the heat on restaurants. Credit card companies, as punishment, will end services to those who do not follow security regulations.
Credit card companies are especially worried about specialized software restaurants use, which combine such features as tabulating bills, delivering orders to the kitchen and tracking reservations. Since credit card companies cannot require software makers to abide by their security rules, they instead apply pressure to restaurants. Visa’s web site maintains a list of software programs that meet its requirements.
But software makers that even with the best software, restaurants could still be in a lot of trouble if they disregard password protection or firewalls. Software companies say it is not up to them to let restaurateurs know what they must do to be in compliance with credit card rules.
The author of this article writes for POS-For-Restaurants.com, a VP of Customer Relations with over 20 years experience in restaurant point of sale system, helping restaurant owners nationwide increase their efficiency and bottom-line profits.
To learn on how our national POS network of restaurant point of sale experts can help your business achieve greater success in these difficult economic times, visit POS-For-Restaurants.com.
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Which Restaurant Software and Hardware is Right For Your Restaurant?
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Restaurant POS Software and Hardware
If you want to run your restaurant business to success, learn the basics: good food, good service and the right location. These days, there’s another important consideration: the restaurant software you use to run your POS system.
Even though physical components like the monitors and computers are the most visible, the software is the heart of the POS system. Doing a careful evaluation of restaurant POS software is key to getting a system that will satisfy both employees and customers.
What to look for in restaurant software
First of all, it’s important to know what exactly you need the software to do. Your restaurant POS software is able to handle checks per customer or per table, track orders per server, move diners from the bar to a table, manage waiting and reservation lists, and more.
Once you’ve found that restaurant software that can meet your basic requirements, test it and see for your self how to use it. While there will always be a learning curve for your staff when you adopt a new POS system, having a restaurant software that’s easy to use can reduce the learning curve to manageable levels.
You may learn more about ease of use by having one or two of your servers involved in the evaluation. They’ll try out different kinds of oddball situations and changes that can cause problems with some software.
- Security – each employee should have their own user account. With this you are able to limit your employees’ access to sensitive data and functions (such as comping meals) to managers, if desired.
- Flexibility – your servers can manipulate checks to match your patrons’ whims: easily splitting checks and tracking special orders, for example.
- Reporting – this is one of the best features of POS software it can create detailed report which is a great advantage for restaurant owners. So you better make sure to choose the right software that gets detailed information either per check, per server, or overall, ranging from daily to annually.
- Multiple location support – if applicable, make sure that your POS system is able to track and record on multiple locations, including local differences in staffing and pricing.
What to look for in a hardware
Of course you’ll need to invest in restaurant POS hardware as well: computers to run the restaurant software on, touch-screen displays for servers to enter order, and printers to produce order slips for the kitchen. Along with POS software is hardware – The only big deicision with it comes to using hardware is how many will you need.
Now, are you willing to start your business right? Find more information at POS-For-Restaurants.com and receive free unbiased quotes from the experts in restaurant POS systems serving your area.
The author of this article is the Vice-President of Customer Relations at POS-For-Restaurants with over 20 years of experience meeting the automation needs of many restaurant owners all over U.S.
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Starting Out Right For Your Restaurant POS System With A “New Year Computer Checklist”!
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Start out the year right for your restaurant POS system. Let’s talk about some of the most common and crucial mistakes that are made in regard to some very simple configuration aspects of the computer system. Some of these mistakes can cost restaurant owners thousands of dollars in wasted time and money. And even worse… it can frustrate your guests and employees.
Whether you already have a computer system or you’re going to configure a new one yourself — it’s important for you to make sure everything is done properly.
Don’t let me give you the wrong idea. I do not always recommend configuring your own computer system! I recommend letting a computer professional do it for you. But I’m sure some of you will do it yourself no matter what I say. So this is for those that insist on doing your own computer installations and for everyone else to double check and make sure everything was done properly. This could help you avoid some major problems and save hours of precious time.
So here are some simple retail computer system configuration checklist for a Windows network you could use as a guide:
1) Using a Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS)
The number one cause of electronic component failure is from fluctuations in electricity (up and down). A good UPS can solve this problem by regulating the power. I recommend that you at least put a good UPS on your server. And it’s a good idea to use them on each of your worstations too.
2) Plug All Your Cables Into the UPS
Check if all cables that power your computer and network are plugged into your UPS. It’s also important to make sure cables that can carry electrical charges are plugged into a surge protector or UPS. For example, the phone line for your modem can fry your computer if it’s not plugged into a surge protector. So make sure your modem line, network cables, and power cords are all plugged in properly.
3) Passwords and Security
It is advisable that you lock your server with a hard-to-break password on all Windows accounts so that no one will be able to access it especially hackers who will [intently damage your server].
4) Intalling and Configuring Security Tools Like An Antivirus Software and AntiSpyware Software
It’s also very important to configure that software to update automatically every day, so you don’t forget.
5) Limiting Employee Internet Access
Employees will surft on anything they can on the internet. Anti-virus and anti-spyware software does help but if an employee unintentionally downloads the wrong program or accepts the wrong message, it can cause some serious problems to your system. You can avoid this by disabling internet browsing on your computers. Or another option is to protect internet access with a password.
For restaurant owners, this is very important! In order to protect secured files from evil hands, limiting employee internet access is a must. A retail business owner has to enforce rules to protect his business as well as his profit. Otherwise, what good will a restaurant POS system do if it’s run by a misbahaved or ignorant personnel.
6) Configuring Your Back Up To Run Regularly
As well proven in many situations, it’s best to configure your back up to run automatically after work hours. But you still need to remember to change your back up device (like tapes) every day.
7) Testing Your Back Up At Least Once A Month
Can’t remember how many times I’ve chatted with business owners that have hard drive failure and think they have a good back up plan to restore. But when they try to restore they find it hasn’t been working. That’s why it is very important to test your back up at least once a month by restoring files so you would know that it your back up is working properly. By the way, you should restore to an alternate file location so you don’t mess up your existing software.
So please check your computer system now. If you don’t, you might regret it later. Have a happy and successful 2009!
With over 20 years of restaruant experience, the author and Vice President of Customer Relations at POS-for-Restaurants.com, helps you use your technology to be more efficient and more profitable.
